doldrum moods," the girl declared as she regained control of herself. "It is so wonderful to be together again, to be able to think of ourselves without feeling that we are neglecting any one!"

IV

He did not reply at once, for the conversation carried him back to a period he would have liked to forget. God! how glad he was to be home again! The fighting days at least had given opportunity for action, but those months of ennui at Coblentz! Except for the enforced gaities, he and the others would have gone mad! Anything to banish all thought save of the present. The past was filled with awful memories of trenches and shells, of dead and dying comrades and foes, of hardships and privations; the future was almost as terrifying with its uncertainties and its dreaded problems, still unsettled, perhaps impossible to settle. But the present remained,.. a present beyond their control, ordained by a power beyond their reach; a waiting present, to be endured. And to make it endurable, the past and future, home and its conventional requirements, for the time had to be absolutely forgotten.

Richard finally turned to Lola, ashamed of his momentary obsession, and laughed consciously.

"How impossible it is to keep from talking about it!" he exclaimed; "yet every time I do I swear I'll never mention it again."

"Whenever I start out trying to be cheerful, it always ends this way," Lola admitted consciously. "You still feel it, just as I do."

"I can't shake it off," she declared. "I find myself out of sympathy with everything and everybody. I

try

I do try

.. to forget and to settle back into the old routine, but I simply can't do it."

Richard pressed her hand sympathetically.

"I understand," he said simply. "I am drifting just as you are. There's no use trying to deceive you. Everything is altered. Father is different, the men in the factory . . . the people we meet socially are different. The whole world is different."

His intensity caused Lola for the moment to forget her own introspection. She placed her hand on Richard's arm.

"I wonder if the change is in the whole world or just in ourselves ?"

"What difference does it make?" Richard demanded with a return of the bitterness in his voice. "All the idealism I thought I had in France has been knocked out of me since I came home. Now I've lost faith in everything."

"Oh, Dick," Lola cried, "don't say that! It is because of that idealism that things seem out of sorts to you."

"I know; but if I'm going to keep myself from going stark, staring mad I must forget it and be like other people. I can't change them.”

"Think what you and I gained which they don't even know exists," she urged. "I couldn't give that up, nor could you.'

"It all seemed fine enough over there," Richard admitted. "While I was lying flat on my back those

weeks at Toul I had everything worked out. I called it my 'vision.' I kept asking myself what it was all for, and I had the greatest pipe-dream you ever knew. Then I came home and found . . . this."

"You never told me that, Dick. I have been worried to see you so restless and unhappy, but I have no fears if you have really had a vision. Tell me what it was."

"It would seem ridiculous now, but then I believed it was based on something. I'm trying to forget it. Better let it die a natural death and bury it."

"No, no, Dick; tell it to me. I am just as unhappy as you, but the knowledge I gained that there is something greater and more beautiful than anything I ever knew before has helped me to carry on. You and I have a message to the others which we have not yet delivered."

"You have kept up your war work, Lola. You don't have to push into the background that which brings out the best there is in you." He pointed to the figure of a man working in one of the flower beds. "Barry O'Carolan is a daily reminder of something you have really accomplished. It is different with me. In France I was treated as a man whose ideas were at least worth

listening to. I had men under me. I gave orders, and could keep my self-respect. Here I have nothing but my work at the plant, and I don't fit in there any more. With the other men, I am simply an automaton, forbidden to think, whose loyalty is measured by my willingness to merge my individuality in the mass and to accept blindly the dictation of another. I tell you,

it is maddening. Think of it, factory work after three years in the open!"

"You are not alone, Dick. There are hundreds of the workmen who feel it just as much."

"That's what keeps me upset. If I were the only one I could cut and run, but there are boys in those shops who are simply eating their hearts out when they were perfectly satisfied before. At first I thought I could help them, but I can't make my father or any of these stay-at-homes understand even my language. They think the men are chesty because they have been in the army. It isn't that, . . their experience has developed them and given them a new dignity. They are entitled to respect. Work as work isn't beneath them, but some of the jobs are, even though they weren't before. The men don't want anything given them, but they do want a chance to use the new asset they have gained."

"You mustn't give up," Lola insisted. "You are the only one who can ever hope to make your father and the Directors like daddy understand. You owe it to these men, Dick, and when you have put it over for them you will make real that vision of yours, please tell me what it was.'

"Little chance," Richard protested doggedly; "but the fact that I am still here shows you that I haven't quit yet."

"It has been such a change for the men since they returned to civilian dress," Lola continued, . . "such a contrast in the way they have been treated since they were welcomed home as conquering heroes; for with

the taking off of the uniforms the people seem to feel that as the war is over it should be forgotten."

"For the people," Richard interrupted bitterly, “the war was simply a seven-day wonder; but for the

"I have always dreaded this time," Lola persisted. "In my hospital there was a wonderful little French captain. He was useless for further military service because of his wounds, so they assigned him to our staff as helper. One sleeve was empty and one leg was wood, like Barry's, but he used to hobble around the hospital humming the 'Marseillaise,' greeting every one with a smile, and radiant in the proud possession of a brilliant row of medals fastened on his breast. Every one called him 'the spirit of France.' I wonder where he is now, and whether he is still smiling, and if people are still as considerate of him. If he has had to take off his uniform and put aside his medals what is there left, Dick? Nothing but his helpless, butchered body. I do hope that the people around him haven't forgotten what it represents."

"At any rate, his government is taking better care of him than we have taken of our cripples," Richard blurted out.

"Ah," sighed Lola, "that would not satisfy him. He lived upon the admiration which he saw day after day in the eyes of every one around him. He isn't big enough, Dick, to see beyond, so once his beribboned uniform is taken off his glory vanishes with it. . . Come, Dick, tell me of your vision."

Richard did not respond at once. The crystalization